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Here are 5 metro Detroit neighbors saving the day during the coronavirus pandemic

There's the Oak Park police officer sewing face masks, the Madison Heights social worker who started a food pantry and the Berkley technology guru giving away homemade computers to kids.

Then there’s the substitute teacher offering free online tutoring to any student who needs the help and the former postal worker who devised a grocery-delivery service for people under quarantine.

These are your neighbors, metro Detroit, the helpers that Mr. Rogers told us to look for at times like this. And they all say that they are receiving far more from the folks they help than people do from them.

“Personally, my world has grown so much, even though I cannot get within six feet of people,” said Amanda Stein of Madison Heights.

Getting food to the hungry

Amanda Stein, front, is pictured here with fellow volunteers at a Madison Heights food pantry she helped found to feed those in need during the pandemic.(Photo: Amanda Stein)

Alert bells went off for Stein when Michigan’s coronavirus cases started to double and school was canceled in March. That is when Stein went onto a Madison Heights Facebook page and said the city needed a food pantry for residents in need.

Someone responded with, “Why don’t you start it?” Stein, 40 and a longtime social worker, agreed. She launched a separate Madison Heights Food Pantry Facebook page,invited city leaders and friends to join and started a thread asking how to do it. They needed a building. They needed drivers. They needed food.

Two weeks later, they got it done. Madison Heights had its first food pantry, stocked with donated food on donated shelves and donated refrigerators in a donated building at 400 W. Cowan. A volunteer team of two dozen people and a six-person leadership team started preparing food boxes and advertising open days for local residents.

Stein said the pantry offers food pick-ups around the city but also does safe home delivery for people who are self-isolating during the pandemic. To date, the Madison Heights Food Pantry has helped more than 3,000 people.

The Madison Heights Food Pantry has helped more than 3,000 people.(Photo: Amanda Stein)

Relationships are driving this effort, Stein said. There are people calling businesses asking for food donations and setting up volunteer schedules. There are drivers taking food to drop on people’s porches. Retailers including Costco and Starbucks, as well as individuals, are donating food to make sure there is enough for all, Stein said.

Food boxes include things such as cereal, canned goods, pasta and sauces, rice, bread, dairy and meat and cheese when available, snacks, pet food and hygiene and baby needs.

“I’m honored and blessed to work with them and create this,” Stein said of everyone involved. “There’s a sense of pride that we’re all in it together.”

People also have created fund-raisers to help, Stein said, including the American Islamic Association, which donated $1,500. Parents from her kids’ school have held personal fund-raisers as well.

Stein, who wrote her honors thesis on the Great Depression versus the Great Recession, admitted she “panic-shopped” at first, buying two to three times the amount of food her family of five needed. Knowing there were people in her community who would be unable to do that or may be living without enough food has kept her going in these hard hours. Plus, working helps the time go faster.

“Sometimes, it’s the smallest things that can make all the difference,” Stein said. “It’s nice to be the helper.”

When the longtime software company owner heard about schools and businesses closing due to the coronavirus, his first instinct was to help.

Coggeshall owns a laser cutter, so he started making masks and ear guards for health care providers. The question of how to help students was more complicated: How could he create simple computers for at-home use?

Berkley resident John Coggeshall started constructing and giving away computers to area students who needed technology to do online school during the pandemic.(Photo: John Coggeshall)

“This is a pretty serious disruption in their lives that even in the best circumstances has a high likelihood that kids aren’t going to learn as much as if they were in school,” Coggeshall said. “They wouldn’t have the technology or resources to be as successful as they could be. … I realized chances were high that school systems would struggle to get technology into the hands of the kids who needed it.”

Coggeshall started constructing low-cost computers using parts he could acquire on his own or through donations. The computer brand, known as a Raspberry Pi, is popular in robotics classrooms because it's affordable, customizable and has WiFi built in, Coggeshall said. Users can even attach them to a home TV screen if they don’t have a monitor.

Add an inexpensive keyboard and mouse, and you’ve got a way to do homework, connect to Zoom classrooms and submit finished assignments through the Internet.

Coggeshall has given away 10 computers around Berkley, Detroit and elsewhere. To build more, he launched a GoFundMe to purchase more parts and keep the momentum going. Families can go to the MI Helpers Facebook page to make requests to receive a computer. Each computer costs approximately $200 to make.

“It’s an all-in effort,” Coggeshall said. “We’re facing an event that’s going to define a generation. So you do all you can do in an attempt to make sense of it all and to try to help people get through it. … There’s a welcome sense of combatting powerlessness in helping.”

Keeping us safe

Pamela Lynn and Community Services Coordinator for Oak Park, Robert Koch, handed out masks to the public on April 27, 2020 at the Oak Park Public Safety building.(Photo: Kirthmon F. Dozier, Detroit Free Press)

Robert Koch wasn’t the star student in his home economics class. But his teachers should look at him now: The Oak Park community resource officer has sewn more than 2,000 masks since February, when he first heard of the coronavirus spread.

He has given his homemade creations to family and friends, safety workers, Oak Park residents and anyone else who needs them, including people in Southfield, Ferndale, Hazel Park and Huntington Woods.

In his role at the police department, Koch is responsible for having enough PPE on hand for the station. He went to order masks in February only to find they were sold out nearly everywhere. The ever-resourceful Koch got crafty. He went on YouTube, watched a mask-making tutorial and ordered fabric and elastic. Then, he went to work on his home sewing machine.

Koch made enough masks to cover everyone he personally knew, so in March he posted an offer on an Oak Park neighborhood group on Facebook. Give me your address, Koch said, and he would drive by with a mask.

Koch pivoted and set up mask giveaways at an Oak Park park. There, he and Pamela Lynn of Oak Park, a friend who owns a hair salon in Birmingham, gave out homemade disinfectant and masks. They gave away 100 bottles and 200 more masks in 20 minutes, Koch said.

Community Services Coordinator for Oak Park Robert Koch hands out masks to the public on April 27, 2020 at the Public Safety building.(Photo: Kirthmon F. Dozier, Detroit Free Press)

Throughout it all, Koch kept sewing. Koch said he broke his sewing machine twice with the effort. He also enlisted community members to help, including a 92-year-old senior sewer. He created a mask giveaway every Monday at the Oak Park police station, and he said the line of cars looking for masks regularly goes around the block.

Times vary for giveaways so Koch suggests checking Oak Park Facebook groups, including the Oak Park Forum, for updates.

“I was spending about 40 hours a week after work and on weekends making masks,” Koch said. “I now have two (sewing machines) because I had to buy another one while mine was in the repair shop after I wore it out making the first 300 masks.”

Every kind word of thanks motivated the Pleasant Ridge resident and father to do more. He’s made them for the Oak Park City Council. He even made a mask for Sparky, the dog character he plays at events.

“It means the world to people who can’t make their own mask, can’t buy one or don’t have access to one,” Koch said. “For the officers, every person wearing the mask is one less person we have to run a medical on, endangering two officers and paramedics and a staff of a dozen different people that they’ll come in contact with at the hospital.”

“Even if I only handed out one mask and one person didn’t get sick, you’re helping out a bunch of people,” he said.

From grocery store to porch

Tom Hallock has a mechanical mind — he can see a system in his head and determine its strengths and weaknesses. This ability is a byproduct of his more than 20-plus years working at the U.S. Postal Service, going from hand sorting to machines that work with accuracy and speed.

Tom Hallock started a grocery delivery service, at no charge, to help Royal Oak residents get food during the quarantine.(Photo: Anne Hallock)

That helps explain how the 65-year-old Royal Oak resident came up with a grocery-delivery system to help those coping with coronavirus.

Royal Oak residents under quarantine or running out of food can shop online at Holiday Market in Royal Oak, pay for their order and then call or email his ROCOVIDGroceries service. He then picks up the order and drops it off on the customer’s front porch. There is no contact at either stop because the market puts the finished order directly in Hallock’s car trunk.

Hallock started the service March 20, and he has completed nearly a dozen deliveries so far. His work is postponed for the moment because of some longstanding health issues – he’s doing OK. But he is working with other volunteers to continue his mission.

Hallock said he noticed the gap in the grocery-delivery system early on. People could order the food, but sometimes they may not have the transportation to pick it up or the means to pay for a delivery service. Others may have been exposed to COVID-19 and may not feel comfortable with any outside exposure.

Royal Oak residents who order and pay online for groceries from Holiday Market can then get them delivered to their door for free using @ROCOVIDGroceries.(Photo: Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press, Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press)

“It’s a simple thing. You drive there, you drop it off, no big deal. Having spent a lifetime in maintenance, one of those things you always do is try to figure out a better, faster way to do things. You look for holes in the system. … For a few minutes, I can solve a food problem for someone else.”

Additionally, he has been raising money to buy meals for the late shifts at Beaumont Royal Oak, where he was treated for cancer twice. Hallock also was a public servant — he was on the Royal Oak Planning Commission from 2001 through 2015. He was chair of the commission from 2006 to 2015, as well.

“You need to give some time if you can. It’s your community,” Hallock said. “There’s so many different ways to contribute. You may not think it’s much, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t have to be. … You don’t have to be brilliant. You just need to have some kind of idea and people will join you. There’s people out there who want to help.”

Will help tutor your kids — for free

Melissa Levine calls them “her kids.” These are the students that others have overlooked, passed by, ignored or didn’t know how to reach. They’re the kids who may have behavior issues but also hug her puppy when they meet her on the street. They’re the ones that have saved her as much as she has saved them.

Levine of Huntington Woods is a 70-year-old kid herself, she admits. She loves learning the new slang or when her kids that she regularly tutors show her how to do a TikTok dance.

Longtime substitute teacher Melissa Levine is offering free online or phone tutoring while students are learning from home during the pandemic.(Photo: Frameable Faces Photography)

When the coronavirus shut down the schools, Levine, a longtime substitute teacher, found herself with too much time on her hands. Her children are grown; her husband, a retired sheet-metal worker, volunteers. Levine decided to go on some local Facebook boards around Huntington Woods and lend herself out as an online or phone tutor for any kid that needed help.

What’s the catch, some asked. None, she replied.

It’s all completely free.

“I’m not doing this to be nice,” Levine said. “I’m bored. I need to teach. … These are my kids. I would do anything for them.”

Levine said she can teach pretty much anything after having been in schools since 1971. She’s worked with every age of student, so the grade level doesn’t matter.

“Some just have an easy question. Some need to vent their frustration. Some just need the questions explained in a different way,” Levine said.

The key is communicating with the kids, finding out what they need and helping them become successful. That is the best reward for any teacher, Levine said.

She is still accepting kids to tutor — people can reach out to her via her email lissy365@hotmail.com.

“We all need a little tutoring,” Levine said. “We all need the help ... and we do need to help each other.”

The Detroit Free Press is on guard with breaking news, tips and analysis to help you through this crisis. But we need your help. Please subscribe to support Free Press journalists who are reporting on the coronavirus. Or you can make a tax-deductible contribution to the nonprofit Report for America to help us put new reporters on the ground in metro Detroit.

Editor's note: This story was edited for clarification after being published.